


Five Years Left to Cry in

by desperatetimes (lyricl)



Series: Make Merit while Alive [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Loss of Faith, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 20:05:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10044440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricl/pseuds/desperatetimes
Summary: It took six months for the Empire to reach Jedha after the fall of the Republic, and another six months for Baze to leave it behind.





	

The first year was the hardest. It seemed impossible now that Chirrut had survived it.

The pity. How he hated it. The worst was that he couldn't jest about losing Baze the way he had made light of losing his sight. He had been careful never to meet pity with anger, only with amusement, with smugness or even arrogance.  The most he could do to meet the sad glances—the woman in the market who sold the _ful_ Baze loved, his fellow Guardians—was keep his face blank. He knew that when he tried to smile he could only wince or grimace, like some deep cave creature thrown suddenly into the light.

Every day brought the same torture: the hope that today would be the day that Baze would return. Baze had always had a truly formidable temper, but he’d never been able to stay angry for long. At least, not with Chirrut.The Force knew how Chirrut tested him. 

_I am one with the Force and the Force is with me._ He repeated it over and over, as he counted his breaths in and out like an initiate learning to meditate. But a new koan came creeping in each night: he left me. He left me. He said he'd never leave me. He left me.

And after the first year, worn down like a polished stone to its smooth, barest center: he is never coming back.

...

The second year was the hardest. It seemed impossible now that Baze had survived it. 

His anger sustained him through the first year. It was blinding, almost frightening. The mere thought of Chirrut's measured acceptance of the unspeakable evil spreading across the galaxy, his unwavering belief in the Force—it made him crazed with rage. It went beyond anger and into repulsion. If he dwelled on the memories, he became overcome with a need for violence. The need to smash his fist through a wall, to bludgeon someone who deserved it over and over and over. He found himself thinking, desperately, I don't want to feel anything anymore, I don't want to feel anything anymore. He thought of Chirrut as little as possible. 

When his thoughts strayed and the feelings of impotent, all-consuming anger started to swell in his head, he repeated the steps for his transport's safety check again and again. Ships were totally unknown to him until he had all but flung himself off world, so the thought wasn't fraught like everything from his past. He said the sequence again and again to himself, squeezed into his tiny metal bunk, listening to the Clawdite snore above him. Step one, ensure manual seal of top hatch. Step two, flip safety switch to closed. Step 3, confirm pressure reading inside the cabin. Step 4...step 5...step 6....and for the first year, the vicious thought that sealed his little ritual: _I am never going back_. 

But the second year. The second year Baze jumped from one company to another, guarding transports making shipping runs to and from the Outer Rim.

His ship landed on Ek-Baam once the sun had gone down and the planet's triple moons risen. Landing in a new place at night was always strange. You could be anywhere in the galaxy, and no matter how vivid the holos, you were unprepared for what greeted you in the morning. When Baze went out in search of breakfast the next day, he wandered through the market.

He was taking a second lap to decide between a cup of hot sweet rice drink or a tropical fruit pudding when a group of young day laborers caught his eye.At the head of the pack was a trim, smooth-skinned young man. 

There he was. Laughing like Chirrut laughed when he had properly struck down some petty, cruel challenger, with head thrown back and mouth wide to let out a great "ha!" With the sleek, muscled arms that Chirrut had, the long legs and the smooth, strong chest. He felt a twin surge of lust and sorrow so strong it was like someone had put their hands inside his belly and squeezed every soft, vital part of him tight. 

Suddenly his angry mantra, so oft practiced, began repeating inside his mind like the temple bells at sunset hour: I am never going back. I am never going back. 

He turned abruptly, food forgotten, and stumbled into the space behind a vendor’s tarp. Later he would forget what the day laborer looked like, and he would forget what he eventually ate for breakfast, but he would remember this: staring at the ugly purple stripes of the tarp as he struggled desperately to breathe.

…

The first and second years, Baze only touched himself when he was so drunk he could barely get hard in the first place.

By the third year, when he had drank too much whiskey and gone back to find his sad little shared bunk mercifully empty, he thought about Chirrut.About the first time he'd let Baze come in his mouth, when Baze had just turned 20.By that point they’d had enough practice that they each knew how the other liked it: Chirrut liked when Baze massaged his thighs while working him with tight, consistent suction, while Baze liked a show, wanted to see Chirrut’s full lips on the head of his cock. Baze hadn't know he’d wanted it until Chirrut was ignoring his gasped warning, working two fingers in Baze’s ass.Chirrut held his gaze the whole time, his pretty brown eyes hot and intent on Baze’s face. After Baze came, balls clenching so hard it was almost painful, he looked down to realize Chirrut hadn’t swallowed it all. He was resting his cheek on Baze’s thigh, a small smile on his face and Baze’s come around his mouth. 

The next week Baze couldn't stop thinking about it. The memory would suddenly come back to him in a flash while meditating or performing his daily chores: Chirrut’s satisfied, slightly dazed expression. Baze would become so overwhelmed with embarrassment he’d actually grimace. More than once someone caught him at it, and he had feign a sore shoulder or a stubbed toe.

Now the memory leaked out into his mind’s eye like a lone drop of liquid breaking through the seal of a dam. When he was sober, he could hold back the flood, but if he drank too much—it all came rushing back.

…

The third year, Chirrut took up with Xel, a fellow Guardian five years his junior. Xel shared Chirrut’s room, and his bed, and they had long, meandering conversations about theology and philosophy. Xel had been left behind too, in a way. Fareeza, Xel’s partner of 6 years, had left the Guardians to join Saw Gererra’s band. The dissolution of their union had been as silent and abrupt as Baze and Chirrut’s had been slow and loud. 

Xel lost three fingers and the full use of his hand from shrapnel after Gererra’s rebels threw a grenade at an Imperial Patrol.It was Chirrut who dragged him to safety, who bound his wounds and nursed him, just barely, through the infection that followed. 

Being with Xel was easy, or perhaps better to say it was never hard. He and Chirrut never argued. The sex was pleasant. 

Sometimes when Chirrut was lying besides Xel at night, he wanted to ask him, don’t you miss her? He wanted them both to speak plainly and admit that what they had now wasn’t the same as what they’d lost.

Xel didn't argue with him until the early morning about the Force, until Chirrut put a hand over his mouth and demanded he stop neglecting his romantic duties. Xel didn’t greet Chirrut at the door after a long day apart by sweeping him up in his arms and kissing him over and over again until Chirrut was practically purring with happiness. And Chirrut didn’t lie on Xel’s chest at night with his face buried in his neck, thinking his heart would burst in his chest from the strength—the breadth—of his feelings. 

He’d seen Xel with Fareeza. It wasn’t the same for him either. 

The fourth year, after two months in which they hadn’t once attempted to make love or even to kiss, Xel said one morning at breakfast, “A room has opened up with Serena. I think I’ll take it.” Chirrut had said, “Alright.” And that was that. 

…

The fourth year, Baze met another former Guardian who’d left Jedha. Or rather not met, but heard, from across a crowded port in Coruscant. Baze was leaning against a lamppost, waiting for his ship to arrive, when he heard a shriek of Jedhan filthy enough to impress any NiJedha street rat. That voice—he knew that voice—

And there she was. Lina Zhang, Chirrut’s childhood friend. Tall Lina, with the same tightly shorn hair but very new tattoos across her bare shoulders. Lina with the loud laugh, quick temper, and deep devotion to acts of service as part of her faith. Lina who preferred brute force over speed when sparring, who drove half the other initiates crazy when she hit a growth spurt at 17 and started beating everyone at push up competitions.

Lina was in the middle of what looked like a well-worn but good-natured argument with a female Twi’lek with cerulean skin like the inside of a kyber cavern.He started to walk toward her, overcome by a sudden longing for someone from his past. Surely Lina would understand. He could tell someone, finally, about the anger he’d shoved down for four years and the despair that filled up him a little more each day like the rising sea on a warming ice planet. 

He'd had what he recognized now was a child's faith, a "good luck" faith, back when he, Chirrut, and Lina had been young. “If I pray enough, what I want to happen will happen.” If nothing else, four years later, he could admit that at least Chirrut accepted the dark underbelly of his unending faith: if the Force willed Chirrut safe all those times, then it had willed all those who had died dead. If the Force saved a sick child, then it condemned those who never recovered. 

Baze had seen things he couldn't explain. And he believed the stories of what the Jedi and the Sith had achieved, wondrous things and terrible things alike. But he saw now that the Force was a tool. Or rather, it was like gravity: just a fact of the universe, a force of nature. It was ridiculous to believe, as he had in his youth, that everything in the galaxy—the whole universe—was building toward a singular outcome. Everyone was drifting, alone and without any knowledge of where they were headed—or whether they were going anywhere at all. The best everyone could do was to beat back death as long as they could.

If Lina had left Jedha, then maybe Chirrut had left too. Surely Lina, who’d known Chirrut practically her whole life, wouldn’t have left him behind. Lina loved Chirrut like her own brother, Lina wouldn’t have abandoned him—

Like Baze had. 

Baze stopped, and turned sharply before she could catch sight of him.  He’d never thought himself a coward, but he could not face his fear of her judgment, or worse, of any terrible news she might bear with her from Jedha. A sudden, frightful thought: what if she’d left because there was nothing left to bind her to their home? What if she left because something had happened to Chirrut?

He walked back to the meeting point in a daze, certain that she wouldn’t recognize him even if she spotted him. His wild hair. The twin blasters strapped to each hip. The Baze that Lina had known was gone, just like the Lina that Baze had known was gone. They were strangers to each other now.

…

The fifth year, Chirrut finally let Baze go. He’d spent four years trying to do so, but the fifth, instead of _trying_ , he actually did it. 

Chirrut and his fellow remaining Guardians had taken up the practice of begging in the streets, offering fortunes in exchange for a few credits or a hot meal.It was distasteful, but it served its purpose: the Guardians could move freely among the people and keep watch over the streets of Jedha without arousing undue suspicion among their Imperial occupiers.The fall of the Republic had forced the Guardians to abandon their organized social programs and spiritual outreach, although the pilgrims poured in steadily as always and would continue to for as long as the Temple stood. The Empire was either very canny or very stupid not to annihilate the Guardians the way they had the Jedi. 

Perhaps the Empire believed that allowing the Guardians to operate in this diminished state would pacify the population. If so, the begging helped: Chirrut sensed not just disdain from Imperial troops when they passed him by, but _pleasure_.  The occupiers liked to see the Guardians debase themselves on the streets of the Holy City. It didn’t trouble Chirrut. The weaker he appeared, the better.

One strange day, as he rattled his bowl from a shady corner, Chirrut sensed something from a passerby that made his heart stutter and his stomach seize up. A warm, orange-red energy, quietly floating by him.Baze—Chirrut had felt this before when he had lost his sight and his mind’s eye had become manifest through the grace of the Force.As quickly as he sensed it, the feeling was gone, lost in the shifting chaos of the narrow Jedhan street. Was that Baze? Surely, Chirrut would have sensed his presence, not just this little flicker of feeling. Surely Baze would not have passed him by, after so long.

A dreadful thought: what if Baze had been here before? What if Baze had passed through Jedda a hundred times these past five years while Chirrut sat on these very steps? What if Baze came back to Jedha, but he didn’t love Chirrut anymore, didn’t want to see him again—

Chirrut was overcome with anger and for the first time in the decade that had passed since he lost his sight, he cursed his blindness. The strength of his feelings unnerved him, and he struggled to calm his thoughts. He snatched up his bowl and staff and made his way back to the temple.The Empire had forced the Guardians out of the hermitage, afraid it would become the epicenter of Jedhan sedition.But the Guardians could still run the Temple and guard it at night, so Chirrut claimed a quiet spot in the main courtyard to settle his mind. 

This line of thinking was irrational, he told himself. If Baze had returned, someone would have immediately alerted Chirrut. Baze was hardly unique in the galaxy in his generous spirit and dogged determination. Whoever Chirrut had sensed must simply have shared Baze’s best qualities. Chirrut could parse the difference now that the shock had passed. Baze was never coming back to Jedha. Baze was gone. 

Only he wasn’t, Chirrut realized. Baze was right behind him; Chirrut tugged him along like an anchor. Baze weighed down Chirrut’s spirit and pulled him away from others. Chirrut had embraced non-attachment to material things and worldly aspirations, but still he dragged the memory of Baze and the hope for his return like a child with a ragged doll.

For all Chirrut’s meditating, he had very few sudden and discrete moments of clarity. One came to him now. He had to let Baze go. Not feign acceptance of Baze’s abandonment, as he did during his bi-monthly calls with Lina. Not smile placidly at the mention of Baze’s name, as he did with the aunties reminiscing about the past at the market. Let him go. 

After five years, Chirrut found to his surprise it was easy to do. He felt Baze’s hold on him drift away, and knew that he was truly alone. 

…

The fifth year, a long, unpleasant job finally ended at Takodana. Baze had been there before, two years back, but only for a few hours of tense negotiation that ended with the woman who would become his new boss putting a knife through the hand of his old one. He’d never gotten the chance to get a feel for the place, or to linger in Maz’s tavern.  But now he had all the time he liked. He was a free man, and there was no better place in the galaxy to look for new work than Maz’s. He found a tiny, high-top table in a corner with a good view of the door and a wide window and settled in.

The verdant green forest; the wide pools of fresh water just outside; the spicy smells from the kitchen; the pleasing hustle and bustle of the cantina. He thought, as he often did when traveling to a new place: _Chirrut would love this._ It was a routine thought, an old wound like his right calf muscle, which always acted up. 

Today though, for some reason, it was piercing. Two months from now would mark five years since he’d left Jedha. The familiar nighttime panic started to rise. He was never going to see Chirrut again, he was never going to see Chirrut again—was he even alive—

He tried to stop his thoughts from escalating, bouncing one leg up and down and counting his breaths in and out, in and out.  When he had calmed himself down, he realized that the tiny woman with enormous goggles who had come by to collect his empty cups was staring intently at him. After a long moment of incomprehension, he registered that she was Maz Kanata herself, the proprietor.

 “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said. For a moment he just stared back at her. She set the tray down, dragged a chair over from a nearby table, and hopped nimbly up on it. “Did you hear me young man! I said, you’re not supposed to be here!” 

Baze, who had learned the hard way the troubles that came with sitting in someone else’s seat in a place like this, accepted her rebuke without a fight. “My apologies, Ms. Kanata,” he said, starting to rise.

“No, no! Not yet. Sit down.” She drummed her fingers on the table, her head cocked and her eyes narrowed. “And for stars’ sake. Call me Maz.” Baze, who sensed immediately he would lose badly in a battle of wills with this woman, just waited.

“What’s your name?” Maz asked him. She had a way of making a question into a statement, like she already knew the answer.

“Baze Malbus.” 

“And where you do you come from Baze?”

“Jedha.” Maz nodded and repeated the word back to him.

“There are some who accept all things, who say you are always where you are meant to be.” Maz scrunched up her face in distaste and adjusted her goggles. “Hmmnf. But that’s weak-willed mumbo jumbo.” She threw her hands up. “Lazy bantha shit!” She pointed her finger at him once again, accusing. “You. You’ve got somewhere to be. Someone who’s waiting for you. I can see it in those big, sad eyes.”

Baze, who mistrusted any hint of prophesy and despised fortune tellers, tried to keep a polite expression, but refused to acquiesce to this.

“I thank you for your attention, ma’am, but I believe you are mistaken,” he said, as respectfully as he could manage.He was curt with swindlers and spice-added vagabonds who accosted him with promises to tell his future, but he tried to be gentler with monks and true believers.Still, best to be firm.Direct. Make it clear he wouldn’t have it.

"You would deny it?" She adjusted her goggles until he could see every detail of her amber eyes. "You'd leave him waiting for another year while you look for work with the low lifes that hang out in my bar?"

Baze said nothing, struck dumb by her words. He knew he hadn’t done anything to control his expression, and Maz’s eyes lit up when she saw that she had caught him.

"I know a man that fights the Force when I see one, because I've seen plenty. How long will you resist, Baze Malbus?" Baze felt himself shrinking down before her like she was one of his old Masters who he'd disappointed. "What will it cost you to leave a part of you on Jedha? What will it cost him for you to take a piece of him with you?"

"It's been five years,” Baze said, haltingly. “He won’t—he could be—and I still—“ 

"I've been alive for two hundred times that long. Five years! That’s nothing!” Maz was unmoved. “You can’t undo the past. And some crimes are too terrible to be forgiven.” She became as distant and still as her statue that guarded the door, before lightening once again and smiling up at Baze. “But your crimes, I think, are not so serious. You ran away. You were young. And you have some time yet.”

Suddenly the little woman slammed a palm down on Baze’s table. “Go home, Baze Malbus,” she barked.

“I will,” he said, shocked into speaking without thinking. In the silence that followed, he felt that it was true. I will see him again. I _will_ see him again. “I will.”

She sat back, pleased now that he was doing as she told him, and blatantly ogled him. “Such a big man. A fighter! That’s good! You’ll need it.” Her face grew serious. “Such a big fight coming, such a long fight.”

“Chin up, big man!” she said as he stood. “That hangdog look won’t help you.” She peered up at him, adjusting her goggles once more. “Hmmn. Or maybe it will. Those sad brown eyes. Maybe he’ll forgive you faster.” 

He moved toward the exit and then turned back, giving her the formal bow he’d used long ago. It was the right thing to do. She seemed to grow taller, so much so he felt she was looking down on him like the elder monks once had. 

“Go home, Baze Malbus,” she said, gentle now. “May the Force be with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Abandoning my Buddha sermon titles for some Bowie. Leaning in to my decision to write this series totally out of order.


End file.
